ON THE COVER -
March Issue 2006
Valentines From Our Yesterdays.....by Roy Nuhn
The wonderful world of NASCAR collectibles for all of its dimensions and dynamic is a relatively young one. Unlike baseball or even football collectibles which can be traced well back to the 19th century, the National Association of Stock Car Racing (NASCAR), is only as old as the 1940s with races in the Daytona beach area. Historians generally credit a race during the summer of 1949 at the fairgrounds in Charlotte, North Carolina as the first true NASCAR race to be linked to the Winston Cup Series. Early in the 1950s the idea of racing 'strictly stock' full-sized American passenger cars began attracting powerful corporate sponsors such as Championship Sparkplugs and Pure Oil. 

Deland Antiques Show.....by Charlotte Brozek
It's a fact. Puchstein Promotions is high on Deland. Kay and Bill Puchstein bought the long-running show five years ago and have never looked back. The show has a 26 year history in entral Florida and many attendees have never missed a year. "This is a nice show." Kay Puchstein told me, "Antiques and collectibles are well-represented here. Our dealers carry jewelry, linens, pottery, porcelain, primitives, postcards, Victoriana, furniture, military, Disneyana, toys and silver and that's just a small sampling of what show goers can expect to find when they come to Deland."

Q. Help! I have a very nice chair which I believe to be a Baltimore chair. I found a picture in an encyclopedia at a library and it said "According to local tradition, chairs of this type were brought from Norway by a Baltimorean in the diplomatic service. These chairs...were often copied in Baltimore. Chairs of this type do not seem to be known in other cities." It is dark (walnut?) all spindles and the back leans back slightly. The reason I am writing is the seat and back cushions are missing and I want to replace them but have no idea what they should look like. The picture I found had what looked like a sagging leather seat cushion but the back was removed according to the text to show the way the back slants a little. I wrote to a museum in Baltimore but got no response. Can you help?

Forgotten Comic Strip Pioneer-Gene Carr's St. Patrick's Day Postcards.....by Roy Nuhn
Bumptious dogs and nasty little children. They were Gene Carr's trademark characters. He loved to draw them and he did so throughout a two-decade long career as a pioneer of the newest graphic art form - the comic strip. By such signs you always know the man behind the pen. His dogs are noisy, self-assertive and unlovable mutts, and his children are prank-playing, equally unlovable mutts. Rambling through daily comic strips and color Sunday funnies, Carr's creations were familiar sights to readers in the earliest decades of the 20th century.

THE ANTIQUE DETECTIVE
Rustic Furniture - Enjoying a Revival

You could say that rustic furniture is "treeing collectors." There is something comforting about being enfolded in an armchair that looks as if had just been put together by tree parts. It harkens back to children’s tree houses and fashioning toys out of twigs. Perhaps it's our focus on environmental issues that has led to a revived interest in rustic furniture. You may have seen examples and wondered what they were, or their age. If you're puzzled by a table with a base that looks like a gnarled grape vine, you've discovered rustic furniture. The base is actually an old grape vine. Hopefully you'll have found it in your parent's vacation cabin. Otherwise the price can be anything but rustic.

FRANK'S AUCTIONS.....by Fred Taylor
The colorful Florida art of the Highwaymen, the itinerant black painters of the second half the century, continues to attract interest and buyers. The top lot of the February 5 sale at Frank’s Antiques auction in Hilliard was a bucolic rural Florida landscape by Alfred Hair (1941-1970).  Hair was one of the earliest painters in the group and he had a great influence on the rest of the artists. His paintings are always well received. This one sold for $1,550 plus the ten percent buyer’s premium. Another Highwayman, a small oil on board by James Gibson, sold for $500.